Three easy steps to delicious preserves: inspire students to develop green fingers; teach them entrepreneurial skills; and third, let them peel, cut, measure, stir, boil and taste, and voila: you have a table load of bottled goodies.
The students at Marco School have been canning for the past five years and on Friday proudly displayed the product, thus far, of this year's harvest to the Stratford Press: 164 bottles of jams, chutneys and relishes.
The school started their 'fruit forest' eight years ago when registering as an Enviroschool. They now have an abundant harvest, with the community adding to it with fruit and vegetable donations towards the school's canning and bottling project.
Principal Jen Vincent says the aim was to teach the students about caring for their environment; the school added value, teaching the students the science behind canning and bottling, and the how-to of marketing.
"Would we charge the same price as in the supermarkets?" Jen asks the students lined up behind the table. Their unanimous response "no", explaining that their product is home made, "healthy" and contains no artificial preservatives or flavouring.
In between showing the products, Jen and some students excuse themselves to go stir the plum jam cooking in the adjacent kitchen. The students are all hands-on when it comes to their garden product line: they help add trees to the orchard each year, they plant, sow and weed and also help harvest.
""It is quite fun - we miss school a bit," Mathew Gower says unashamedly, adding that they "like getting dirty".
Reuben Pease says his favourite patch in the garden is the tomatoes, which they "sometimes" are allowed to snack on.
The school's motto when it comes to the environment is to waste nothing.
"We try to make the environment better.
"We try to get more trees, more birds and bees," says Sam Pease.
Unused veges and fruit are given to the community; scraps go either to the worm farm or compost bin; waste paper is shredded and also fed to the worms; and the bottled preserves - most made from recipes in the Marco School Cookbook - are sold to raise money for sport gear.
The school currently has bronze status in the Enviroschools programme, but Jen says they will this year try for silver.